Absonus Lab

26/04/2026

SPACE, TIME, IMPROV (a recovery continuum)
An experimental essay film by José Carlos Teixeira, 2026.

An experimental film composed of interwoven fragments: inhabited architecture, spatial immersion, observational practice, and musical improvisations for piano and voice. The conceptual basis derives from negentropy – creating order out of chaos.

Three main dimensions converge:
Architecture and the cinematic gaze
Daily life and domestic spaces
Free-form musical explorations

These facets come together as an intimate digital ecology in the form of a short video.

Dysfunction and unpredictability are harnessed as aesthetic material. The work connects universal experiences of space, time, and how we navigate the world.
Music is an essential element. The power of raw voice and sound operates where visuality alone cannot.
Between exterior (space, family) and interior (voice, gaze), the film oscillates from macro to micro, intimate to social, even political.
Documentary yet subjective, performative and poetic, the work reflects states of loss, pain, exile, silence, solitude, isolation, resilience, patience, calmness, and redemption.

It resists linear timeline and hyper-logical coherence. Open interpretation is welcome.
It is a process. Ever evolving, unfolding. Transcending.

— José Carlos Teixeira

About the film
Title: SPACE, TIME, IMPROV (a recovery continuum)
Duration: 14'45"
Format: 4K / HD video, color, sound
Piano and voice: José Carlos Teixeira
Additional soundscapes: James Blake (remix)
Production: Absonus Lab – Negentropy Nexus Online Residency
Support: República Portuguesa – Cultura / DGARTES

Locations:

Frank Lloyd Wright – Samuel and Dorothy Eppstein House (1953), Galesburg, Michigan
Chicago skyline
Madison, WI streets

About the artist
José Carlos Teixeira (b. 1977, Porto, Portugal) is a visual artist, filmmaker, researcher and educator. His interdisciplinary work spans video-essay, documentary, installation, text and photography. He holds an MFA from UCLA Art Department (Interdisciplinary Studio) and a BFA from the University of Porto. His work has been exhibited at LACE, Hammer Museum, UnionDocs, Anthology Film Archives, MAAT, Museu do Porto, Gulbenkian Foundation, and many others. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Grant, a Gulbenkian Foundation Scholarship, and the SMHAF Experimental Film Award (2019), among others.

www.josecarlosteixeira.com (under construction)
18thstreet.org/artists/jose-carlos-teixeira
openspace.sfmoma.org/2021/04/translations

Watch the film:
The video link is available upon request.
Please send us a message or email [email protected] to request access.

23/02/2026

AI as Catalyst: FCT CEEC Project Explores Transformative Impacts on Digital Performance, Computer Music, and Cultural Creativity

I am pleased to announce the approval of my research project under the 7th Edition of the Scientific Employment Stimulus Programme, Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) .

The project, entitled "AI as Catalyst: Transformative Impacts on Digital Performance, Computer Music, and Cultural Creativity" , proposes an in-depth exploration of the transformative effects of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Digital Performance and Computer Music, situated at the intersection of Sound Studies, Digital Art, and Cultural Creativity.

The research examines AI's dual role as both a disruptive force and a creative asset in Electronic Computer Music. The project develops concepts such as "data-sound" (Paquete, 2022) and "AI-Chimera" – an experimental hybrid form that merges human and artificial creativity – exploring how AI utilizes digital data to create new algorithmic sonic terrains.

Through innovative use of prompt engineering in musical composition, the project employs large language models as tools within computational art processes, investigating the emergence of new forms of creative collaboration.

A central argument posits that AI transcends its role as a mere tool, emerging as a creative collaborator in artistic processes. This perspective aligns with notions of techno-animism, suggesting that technological objects can exhibit characteristics traditionally associated with the living.

The project is structured in three complementary phases, combining theoretical and practice-based research, in collaboration with national and international institutions. A significant component of the practical research will be conducted at Absonus Lab (of which I am the founding director), focusing on immersive sound and image experimentation, as well as at Porto Planetarium for spatial audio research, alongside partnerships with institutions in Germany.

By exploring the complexities of AI's role in sound creation, this project aims to contribute significantly to the discourse surrounding the future of artistic practices in an increasingly AI-driven environment.

Keywords: Generative Music, AI-Chimera, AI and Creativity, Digital Culture, Performance, Sound Studies, Techno-Animism



PT

IA como Catalisadora: Projeto CEEC FCT Investiga Impactos Transformadores na Performance Digital, Música Computacional e Criatividade Cultural

É com entusiasmo que partilho a aprovação do meu projeto de investigação no âmbito do Concurso de Estímulo ao Emprego Científico 7ª Edição – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) .

O projeto, intitulado "AI as Catalyst: Transformative Impacts on Digital Performance, Computer Music, and Cultural Creativity" , propõe uma exploração aprofundada dos efeitos transformadores da Inteligência Artificial (IA) na Performance Digital e na Música Computacional, situando-se na intersecção entre os Sound Studies, a Arte Digital e a Criatividade Cultural.

A investigação examina o duplo papel da IA – enquanto força disruptiva e simultaneamente como recurso criativo na Música Eletrónica Computacional. O projeto desenvolve conceitos como "data-sound" (Paquete, 2022) e "AI-Chimera" – uma forma híbrida experimental que funde a criatividade humana e artificial – explorando como a IA utiliza dados digitais para criar novos territórios sonoros algorítmicos.

Através do uso inovador de prompt engineering em composição musical, o projeto emprega modelos de linguagem de grande escala como ferramentas em processos de arte computacional, investigando a emergência de novas formas de colaboração criativa.

Um dos argumentos centrais é que a IA transcende o seu papel de mera ferramenta, emergindo como colaboradora criativa nos processos artísticos. Esta perspetiva dialoga com noções de tecno-animismo, que sugerem que objetos tecnológicos podem exibir características tradicionalmente associadas ao vivo.

O projeto estrutura-se em três fases complementares, combinando investigação teórica e prática, em colaboração com instituições nacionais e internacionais. Uma componente significativa da investigação prática será desenvolvida no Absonus Lab (do qual sou diretor e fundador), com foco na experimentação em som e imagem imersivos, bem como no Planetário do Porto para investigação em áudio espacial, juntamente com parcerias com instituições na Alemanha.

Ao explorar as complexidades do papel da IA na criação sonora, este projeto pretende contribuir significativamente para o discurso sobre o futuro das práticas artísticas num ambiente cada vez mais impulsionado pela IA.

Palavras-chave: Música Generativa, AI-Chimera, Criatividade e IA, Cultura Digital, Performance, Sound Studies, Tecno-Animismo

̧ãocientífica

27/01/2026

A Sonic Voyage to the Stars: Remembering Hugo Paquete's Celestial Composition

In the vast, silent theater of space, a unique piece of Portuguese sound art is on an eternal journey. We honor the visionary work of artist and researcher Hugo Paquete, who, on September 3, 2016, achieved a remarkable feat: sending a musical composition beyond Earth.

His work, "Unevenness", a spatialized sound piece for 24 audio channels, was selected by NASA to be embedded on a chip aboard the historic OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Launched as part of the campaign, the mission's goal was to reach the ancient asteroid 101955 Bennu. The inclusion was personally confirmed to the artist in a message from the mission team: "Hi Hugo, we wanted to let you know that we received your composition for the campaign, and it will be included."

This was not a broadcast, but a physical placement. Paquete's composition became a silent cultural artifact, a permanent capsule of human creativity deposited on a celestial body over 320 million kilometers away when the spacecraft successfully landed in August 2018. It transformed the artwork into what he called a "silent cultural artefact of intergalactic connection," a direct and enduring link between Earth's artistic pulse and the cosmos.

This pioneering act was a cornerstone of Paquete's profound artistic research into orbital sound, which he later developed into performances like "Orbital Eccentricity," where he used real-time satellite data to conduct improvised sonic dialogues with orbital bodies. You can explore the full academic paper on this later work here: Orbital Eccentricity: Sound performance, using commercial and military satellites with real time tracking data.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3483529.3483748

Today, as the OSIRIS-REx mission (now renamed OSIRIS-APEX) continues its journey, Hugo Paquete's "Unevenness" remains. It is a testament to the power of art to transcend our planet, to turn exploration into a poetic act, and to ensure that the human narrative in space includes not just science, but also the profound language of sound and memory.

We remember an artist who dared to make the universe his collaborator and his canvas.

Key Details:

Artist: Hugo Paquete
Work Sent to Space: "Unevenness" (2015)
Mission: NASA's OSIRIS-REx /
Launch Date: September 3, 2016
Destination: Asteroid 101955 Bennu

Legacy: A permanent artistic artifact in the solar system, pioneering the concept of telematic and orbital sound art.

Explore more of his work: https://hugopaquete.com/

23/08/2025

OUT NOW! Negentropy: The Last Man in the Wasteland by Hugo Paquete

This isn’t a finished album; it’s a sonic archive. A living, breathing document of a post-operatic work-in-progress.

Premiered at Planetário do Porto in 2024, it traces the collapse, reassembly, and speculative resistance embedded in the opera’s core, with a focus on Jani Christou’s Anaparastasis I: The Baritone and Anaparastasis III: The Pianist.

Expect deepfake vocals sourced from diverse origins, layered sample mashups, remixes, CO₂ sonification, and algorithmic sound textures, all woven into radical reinterpretations of Jani Christou’s visionary Anaparastasis scores. These compositions stretch the limits between voice and machine, ritual and rupture, memory and noise.

This release isn’t the final product, it’s a sonic sketchbook, a raw and evolving record of the creative reversals and sonic explorations that shape the work. It documents the process behind the sound, tracing the path toward the full album launch later this year.

Credits:

Negentropy: The Last Man in the Wasteland is created and performed by Hugo Paquete, who also leads its musical direction and dramaturgy.
Baritone Rui Baeta embodies the role of the Last Man, anchoring the vocal and performative core of the piece with Hugo Paquete and deepfake vocals. Violinists Pedro Carvalho and Ianina Khmelik contribute both musically and theatrically, while Cláudio de Pina expands the sonic field on organ, theremin, and synthesizers.
The ensemble cast, Bruno Sousa, Amanda Duda, Alex Alvão, Delrik Borba, Flora Gouveia, Rita Rocha, Rodrigo Guimarães, R. Gritto, and Letícia Arlandis, bring immersive depth to the opera’s dramatic landscape.

Supported by:

The project is funded by the Directorate-General for the Arts (DGArtes) and the Portuguese Republic / Ministry of Culture. It also receives institutional support from the following entities: Planetário do Porto – Centro Ciência Viva, Lisboa Incomum, Escola Superior Artística do Porto (ESAP), University of Algarve, Research Centre in Arts and Communication (CIAC), Artech International, ACE: Teatro do Bolhão, LTK4: Center Court Festival, Maus Hábitos – Cultural Intervention Space, and the Museum of Mechanical Music.

This work was produced at Absonus Lab: Sound Research, Technology and Culture.

Available now on Bandcamp.

2 track album

19/08/2025

New from Absonus Lab: CO₂-to-MIDI System—Turn Air into Music

What if the air around you could compose music?

Introducing our latest innovation: a custom-built CO₂-sensing hardware system that transforms real-time environmental data into expressive sound. Developed between 2013 and 2024 by Hugo Paquete, Christopher Zlaket, and David Stingley, with support from Absonus Lab: Sound Research, Technology and Culture, this system is more than a controller—it’s a living instrument.

Originally created for the opera Negentropy: The Last Man in the Wasteland (2024), the system captures CO₂ levels and temperature shifts, turning audience breath and ambient changes into dynamic sonic landscapes.

Designed for experimental performance, installation, and live composition, it embraces unpredictability—using sonification and randomness to generate immersive, evolving soundscapes.

Powered by a Teensy microcontroller, composers and performers can manipulate MIDI mappings in real time, treating data as a creative force. Every breath becomes part of the score. Every shift in the air reshapes the sound.

Born from experimentation at Absonus Lab, this system explores the boundaries of computer music and invites artists to explore the poetry of the invisible.

Follow us for more updates, behind-the-scenes insights, and upcoming performances where the air itself becomes the composer.

An independent research center focused on the study, production, and theorization of post-techno sonic-musical phenomena and their intersections with diverse fields of knowledge and technology, including digital media art, sound art, technology, art, and communication. This work is part of a hybrid....

31/07/2025

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7BSEF7kSLdoEX4TcUOY06P

Absonus Lab: Sonic Research Technology and Culture · Episode

31/07/2025

https://absonuslab.org/podcast

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31/07/2025

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4TK90V3F6bSCswtHKk36FK?si=Wvhh7E8zSA6ZxMl_2WwMUQ

Absonus Lab: Sonic Research Technology and Culture · Episode

30/07/2025

Out now: COSMOS – A Cosmological Listening Experience
Immerse yourself in this album of spatial and post-digital compositions by Hugo Paquete, originally created in 2018 for the performance COSMOS by Chris Ziegler at ZKM | Center for Art and Media.
A sonic journey through gravitational fields, orbital data, and the invisible architectures of the universe — where sound is not just heard, but activated between bodies, machines and atmospheres.

https://paquete.bandcamp.com/album/cosmos-music-for-interactive-dance-performance

19 track album

22/07/2025

New Album Release: No Body Lives Here (ODO)
Music & Spatial Composition by Hugo Paquete
Now available on Bandcamp

At the intersection of interactive performance, spatial composition, and post-techno aesthetics, No Body Lives Here (ODO) emerges as a radically distributed sonic architecture.
Commissioned by Chris Ziegler and developed at the Hertz-Labor (ZKM Karlsruhe), this work was first presented in 2020 at the Kubus at ZKM, fully spatialized over a 48-loudspeaker immersive system.
Composed by Hugo Paquete, the piece blends speculative sound design, artificial intelligence, and audience-driven interaction into a dynamic, generative sound environment. Here, sound becomes a living topology—shaped in real time by the movements, presence, and input of the audience through mobile devices.

Rooted in Actor-Network Theory, the composition proposes an open-ended system where meaning emerges not from linear progression, but from networks of interlinked agents—human, machinic, spatial, and sonic. The music operates as a complex mesh of field recordings, granular synthesis, drone textures, loop structures, and AI-driven conversation systems, continuously modulating and reconfiguring in space and time.

The work includes:
– Planet-inspired field recordings using contact microphones, hydrophones, and directional capture
– Granular and drone-based post-techno sound design
– Six AI voice parts and looped conversational modules
– Four sound explosions, four rotations, and bridging elements
– Eight mobile-controlled interactive sound layers
– A final spatial landscape and a closing composition that resolves the experience

Inspired by The Little Prince and Kubrick’s HAL9000, ODO positions artificial intelligence not as antagonist, but as a reflective and participatory voice in a shared sonic dialogue. Through a post-digital and post-techno lens, Paquete’s sound architecture defies teleology, embracing instead a fluid constellation of choices, feedbacks, and emergent trajectories.
Every listening experience is singular—an unfolding of sonic possibility co-authored by the audience, the environment, and the machine.

Concept, Direction, Light & Stage Design: Chris Ziegler
Choreographic Dramaturgy: Paula Rosolen
Text: Michael Hewel
Music & Spatial Sound Design: Hugo Paquete
Software Development: Tejeswa Gouda, Brandon Mechtley, Suren Jayasuriya, Ravi Bhushan, Karthik Kulkarni, Vishal Pandey, Connor Rawls, Ian Shelanskey, Dallas Nichols, Chris Ziegler
Electronics: Chris Zlaket
Stage Technician: Hans Gass

Supported by:
ZKM Karlsruhe (Hertz-Labor), Arizona State University / Synthesis Center,
Landesverband Freier Theater Baden-Württemberg,
City of Munich, Fonds Darstellende Künste Berlin

license
all rights reserved

29 track album